


Flames in the Night

by SoManyShems



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 19:14:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13665534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoManyShems/pseuds/SoManyShems
Summary: When Raf decided to go through his weekly routine of secretly hacking into top secret government databases (as a twelve year old prodigy is wont to do) neither the humans or the Autobots are expecting what they find.





	Flames in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> This will be my first multichaptered work and my first work for Transformers, so if I mess up any characters or terms I'm truly sorry!

“I’m getting left behind again?!” 

If the base wasn’t soundproofed and under rock Ratchet would be sure that Miko’s incredulous shouting could be heard all the way in Jasper, if only for the sheer relentlessness of it. 

“Bulk, you gotta let me come with! I’ve always wanted to go to Canada!” Miko flopped her body onto Bulkhead’s pede, throwing her arms up and to the sides. “Would you really deny me this chance to finally learn how maple syrup is made!” 

“Sorry, Miko, Prime’s orders,” Bulkhead said, who for his part sounded somewhat sad that Miko couldn’t come. “There could be MECH out there.”

“And we don’t want you getting hurt,” Arcee said from the other side of the main room.

“But I can totally help take them down!” She pounded her fist into her palm looking up at Bulkhead. “And with you with me, no one could stop us!”

“As much as that would be amusing to watch,” Ratchet cut in, servos pinched up together between his eyes (Primus, he was picking up human habits now). “It would be better for the team if they don’t have a human in the way.”

“He does kinda have a point,” Raf called from the couch up on the platform.

“No, he definitely does have a point. Like there’d be guns. And explosions.” This time the voice was Jack’s.

“Cool!”

“No, not cool, opposite of cool. Bleeding to death from a gunshot wound is not ‘cool’,” Jack sighed. Then he paused. “Besides,” he said, slyness dripping from his voice, “If you leave now, who’s going to beat my record?”

“Uhh, no,” That got her. She stood back up and crossed her arms, eyes squinting at the platform, “Cause my score is undefeatable.”

“You sure about that?” And then music from the games and…

“No! No way!” And Miko went running up the stairs faster than strictly advisable, the metal wobbling all the way. “Let me see!”

“And that’s our cue,” Arcee said, walking up to the groundbridge with Bulkhead. 

“See you, Miko,” Bulkhead said and got a quiet, “yeah, yeah, see ya,” as she ranted about how he must have cheated, there was no way he could have beaten that, not in a million years. Bulkhead just chuckled as he left through the bridge.

 

* * *

 

“Nope, you cheated.” Miko huffed. “There’s no way you could’ve beaten that.”

“Well I did so there,” Jack said, not quite hiding the smug satisfaction out of his voice. Miko huffed again, pouting and looking away. “Now figure out something to do, I gotta get this achievement.” Jack moved his remote to the side as he kept manically pressing buttons to maneuver the car. 

Miko couldn’t help but sigh dramatically and look around the base for something to do. She could try talking to Bee since he was just standing there cheering Jack on, but it isn’t fun to talk and pester someone who she couldn’t even understand anyway. Any of the other rooms in the base were barren and boring after this long. That was the problem here, she decided, although it was a base full of giant alien robots who transformed into cars there was nothing that remarkable about the place itself save perhaps its sheer size (still beat staying at her host parents though).

With all other revenues exhausted, she looked at Ratchet, and gave him a good once over. Yeah, he’d do. At least until Bulkhead was back. Or he got angry and shooed her away. Whichever comes first.

“Ratchet,” She said as she walked over, drawing his name out. “So, what are you doing?”

Ratchet sighed a long, loud sigh, closing his eyes (optics? She wasn’t sure. Robo techie stuff was more Raf’s domain), “Working.”

“What are you working on?”

“Something far too complicated for you to understand, I assure you.”

“Hit me,” Ratchet looked down at her and raised an eyebrow (do robots even have eyebrows?). He paused for a second as he looked her over and Miko held her breath, trying to look as innocent and nerdy as possible. He seemed to make a decision.

“I’m working on the creating a chemical formula to make synth-en by running various computer simulations and moderating when needed. Although at this point it’d be just as likely that Megatron join the Autobots than us ever cracking the formula.” Ratchet hit the platform, gently but still enough to make the platform shake. “If I had someone here who was actually a scientist, like Perceptor, or even Brainstorm for that matter! Maybe we’d finally get somewhere.”

Bumblebee beeped something that sounded like it could be a reassurance? Or maybe an affirmation? Miko didn’t know, she couldn’t translate beep.

“You give me too much credit, Bee,” Ratchet said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that not only am I not a scientist, let alone one the specialized in Energon and various alternate sources, but I’m severely under equipped to even begin to make much progress.” Ratchet seemed even more irritable now. “Progress that isn’t helped by being constantly bothered.” He glared at her pointedly.

“Okay, okay, I get it, I’ll go somewhere else,” Miko said, throwing her hands up and stepping backwards. And then added after a pause, “Mr. McGrumpypants.”

“And don’t even think about going onto that ‘guitar’ of yours.”

Only this left Miko with little else to do but go back to the couch and just sit there and wait for Bulk to come back. She made a louder groan and made a show of walking back to the couch, flopping on and spreading out (as much as space would allow, Jack and Raf were still on there after all), legs up on the makeshift table/footrest in front of her, narrowly missing the bags of chips. 

“Looks like all I got to do now is beat your record,” Miko says to Jack as he passes the second remote to her. “Which you totally didn’t do, by the way.” 

“Oh, I’d like to see you try.”

And the race was on.

 

* * *

 

And then the race got annoying. 

“No! There’s no way you beat me again!” Miko could almost throw the remote, if it wasn’t for the fact that then she’d have to buy a new one, although maybe that’d give her the extra edge… “You’re cheating!”

“Nope.” Jack said, his time to sprawl out and grin at her. “You watched me the entire time.”

“How do I know you didn’t do something while I was gone.” She accused, sticking her finger at him. 

“Raf and Bee were here with me the whole time,” he took a long sip from his soda. “And they’ll tell you I did absolutely nothing to it.” 

“He is telling the truth,” Raf said, not looking from his computer, where he was staring intently at the screen as he waved her off. Bee beeped at well eye circle things dilating a bit on the computer. 

“How do I know you didn’t bribe them, huh?” Miko now put her finger directly at Jack’s face.

“Just face it, Miko, I’m just naturally talented.” He chucked chip into the air and caught it in his mouth. He then proceeded to choke and splutter, coughing it back up. 

“Yeah, totally talented, I can see it now,” She grumbled, placing the remote down next to her and crossing her arms, pouting. She looked over Raf’s shoulder, looking at his computer where he was looking and waiting for a download to reach the end. 

Miko grinned wide as she nudged Raf shoulder and startling him when she said, “What’s that you’re looking at?” 

Raf, eyes wide, jumped in his seat and lowered his screen quickly, saying, much to fast, “Nothing, just doing homework.” Miko noticed he hadn’t closed his laptop fully. Interesting, she thought, stroking her imaginary beard. Very Interesting…

“You’re totally lying!” She said, making a grab at the laptop. “You totally did all your homework before coming here, you little nerd.” Raf pulled his laptop away just in time, mindful as he both tried to keep it from her (considerable) reach and from making a dastardly fall to the ground. “C’mon, what’re you downloading?”

She gasped.

“You’re totally hacking, aren’t you?!” She stopped trying to reach the laptop, instead her knuckles rubbed the top of her head incessantly. “I’m so proud! I bet your hacking into the government and finding out all their secrets.”

“He’s not hacking, Miko,” Jack let out a long-suffering sigh. “And definitely not into a government branch. That’s just crazy.” Jack looked at Raf.

Let out a small, shaky laugh, “Yeah, totally, who would do that, I mean, Miko obviously, but not me nope, never.” He adjusted his glasses.

“You can’t be serious,” Jack’s jaw dropped. “Why would you do that?!” 

“Ha! That’s so sci-fi, hacking into secret government files, busting out their secrets and exposing them to the world!” Miko clapped Raf on the back, enough to make him jostle the laptop back on his lap. 

“No, you are not going to be doing that,” Jack frowned, looking about ready to snatch the laptop back himself. Raf skootched to the side, holding the laptop just a little tighter. 

“But secrets!” Miko whined, looking up at Jack with her best puppy dog eyes (she thought they looked very impressive). “Don’t you want to expose the government for what it really is?”

“Miko, Bulkhead’s a government secret. And so is Ratchet, and Arcee, and Prime, and even Bumblebee,” This time he looked at Raf while Bee made a little whiney beepy, trilly noise. 

“I wasn’t gonna expose you!” Raf says very quickly to Bee, looking down at his laptop. “Everything here should be about the Autobots, I only got things related to them, and I only managed that cause this base is still connected to that mainframe. Which is surprising cause we practically have a backdoor just lying there…” Raf trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck when he saw the look on Miko’s face. “Anyway, the point is that I’m trying to figure out what they’re saying about the Autobots.”

“You’re tryna make sure they’re not doing anything threatening,” Miko said, realization dawning on her face as he eyes widened.

“Way to spell that out for us,” Jack rolled his eyes, though he still leaned in, pressing right against Miko and looked at all the different files on the screen. “How do you know what you’re looking for?”

“Well, I’ve been through this before, but I try to look for something odd in the pattern, mostly things that could be names for projects, redacted files, changes in files, stuff like that,” Raf said, scrolling through the files as a separate program on his computer ran. “That filters it all out, so I don’t have to go through every file for days. Especially since I don’t even know what half of it means.” 

“That’s so awesome,” Miko said, given him a light punch on the shoulder (Raf had winced and started rubbing it but Miko didn’t notice). 

“It really is,” Jack also said, giving him a much less violent but no less appreciated hair rub. Raf beamed, a slight blush on his cheeks and ears.

“It isn’t really…” At their look, he raised his hands up. “Alright, maybe it is a little awesome.” Bee shook his head, making beeping noises while his car wings fluttered up and down. “Okay, a lot awesome. But it’s still mostly just sitting here and waiting for something to happen.” 

“Hacking into secret government agencies has got to be more interesting than watching Jack cheat anyway,” Miko said, Jack pushing his hand into her shoulders and huffing. 

“What are you kids talking about?” Ratchet looked over from where he was standing, looking down at all three of them. They all jumped, eyes wide (And Bee’s optics dilating out and door wings sprung to attention), looking like deers caught in a headlight.

“Nothing!” They said in unison. 

“Just computer stuff,” Raf said quickly, Bee chiming in with a chirping of his own. 

“Nothing to worry about,” Jack added

“Yeah, we totally weren’t hacking into anything government- Ow!” Miko rubbed her shoulder as she hit Jack back, glaring at him as he shushed her.

Ratchet did one, long sigh, with his head tilt back and his hand pinching where his nose should be and mumbled something under his breath (“Primus save me from fools and sparklings,”) and turned slowly around to face them.

“Please tell me you are not hacking into your governments database so you can get tracked back to this base, where your government has let us stay?” he crossed his arms and started tapping his foot.

“Uhh, no?” Raf tried, saying it in his smallest voice and shrugging, looking to the others helplessly.

Ratchet sighed, yet again, although this one was more exasperated then the other one. “Okay, let me see.” 

“It’s actually pretty boring, nothing’s even happened yet,” Raf says, connecting his computer to the large screens using a HDMI cable and displaying the program running as it shifts and sorts through hundreds gigabytes of data. 

“Then why check at all?” Ratchet said, eyes scanning the documents and flickering as it moves through each file. Raf thinks he’s probably keeping up with most of it too.  
“Well, I hear stuff about how the government places trackers into their own agents, which turns out to be true, and then all the other stuff they do…”

“American government is shady and he’s worried about you,” Miko answers for him, ruffling his hair and leaning on him. Raf looks up and smiles as he lightly tries to shove her off.

“Yeah, basically,” Raf then looks back to Ratchet. “But there’s nothing to worry about! If there was I’m sure Agent Fowler would tell us.” 

The program pinged and opened a document. 

Ratchet raised his eyebrows incredulously. 

“They probably only updated information or something, that happens sometimes,” Raf said, although he looked down at his own laptop and started reading intently whilst Miko and Jack looked over his shoulder, Bee and Ratchet look intently at the monitor.

“Iron Giant? Who calls something that?” Miko said, scrunching her nose.

“It’s a movie,” Jack replies tapping his fingers while his eyes scan the document. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen Iron Giant?” 

“Hey, I never watched it back home!” Miko threw her hands up. “And I’ve only been here for a few months!”

“It’s something that people do to keep what they’re doing secret,” Raf said, bringing them back on track before they could start an argument. “It’s probably an inside joke.” Raf scrolled down some more. 

“Most of this has been heavily encrypted,” Ratchet says, stroking his chin as he studies what’s left. “But it does look like something important,” and he started muttering to himself.

Bee buzzed something, pointing at the screen and looking to ratchet, doors lowered and optics dialed in. 

Ratchet nodded and said, “You’re right,” And then for the benefit for the humans who couldn’t understand him, “They keep repeating the same numbers and letters over and over, and the order seems to be some sort of code. We’ll need to decrypt it but if Bumblebee is right, it’ll be something with coordinates.”

“I’ll download the file and try to decrypt it,” Raf said, already bringing up a separate decryption program. 

“Won’t they notice if you do?” Jack walks over to Raf. “We don’t need any unwanted attention.”

“We should be alright for now.” Raf pushed his glasses further up his nose. “Besides, this may be important.”

Bumblebee beeped at Raf, optics circling in.

“Don’t worry Bee, I can do this.” Raf says, then looks at Jack. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll check for any hidden firewalls and alarms and pull out if it looks like I’m gonna get caught.” Which he thought was unlikely, but whatever. 

“Thanks, Raf” Jack acquiesced. He moved back and collapsed on the couch, picking up the remote. “Why don’t we watch something while we wait?”

**Author's Note:**

> Take anything to do with hacking or science with a grain of salt. All I can say that it's probably more accurate than what the show tells you.
> 
> As always Comments and Kudos are greatly appreciated!
> 
> Also, kids, don't hack into the government. It won't end well.


End file.
